The present invention relates to the field of teaching machines and, more specifically, to apparatus designed to condition students and teachers to wait for a selected time interval following completion of a verbal statement, such as questions by the teacher and responses by the students, before a further statement is made.
Educational research at the elementary school level indicates that both teacher and student variables indicative of the efficacy of verbal instruction are improved by training the teacher and students to wait for a few seconds before either begins a new question or answer following completion of a question or answer by the other. Such research is documented, e.g., in "Wait-Time And Rewards As Instructional Variables, Their Influence On Language, Logic And Fate Control: Part One, Wait-Time" by Mary Budd Rowe, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 81-94 (1974). According to this research, the mean wait-time from completion of a question by the teacher until a response was commenced by a student or a further statement made by the teacher (rephrasing, repeating, or asking a new question, calling on another student, etc.) to be on the order of one second in the absence of any training, conditioning or other instruction regarding wait-time. The teacher normally reacts or asks another question in an average time of 0.9 seconds after completion of a response by a student.
Through proper training the teacher and students may be conditioned to extend the wait-time between questions and answers. It was found that when mean wait-times of 3 to 5 seconds are achieved, the following effects, among others, are noted: the length of response increases, the number of unsolicited but appropriate responses increases, failures to respond decrease, incidence of speculative responses increases, etc. In addition to such improvement in student variables, similar improvements in teacher variables were noted.
While research such as that outlined above has demonstrated the advantages accruing from wait-time conditioning, there remains the problem of instituting suitable training programs for carrying this into effect. A high degree of cooperation and concentration are required from both teachers and students in breaking the normal, relatively short wait-time patterns when depending simply upon advising the individuals to observe the longer wait-times.
Accordingly, it is a principal object of the present invention to provide a device which will effectively aid in conditioning teachers and students to observe longer than normal wait-times in verbal exchanges during classroom instruction.
Another object is to provide a device which enhances the quality of verbal, question-and-answer classroom instruction by means of unobtrusive, non-disruptive, visual indicating means actuable in response to voice signals from the teacher and students.
A further object is to provide inexpensive, portable apparatus for classroom use to improve the content of verbal instruction by aiding in establishing a more efficacious wait-time between teacher and student statements.
Other objects will in part be obvious and will in part appear hereinafter.